Chapter 647: No Food for Three Days
The sun rises, and the spirits rise .
Feeling the temperature rising, Bifang felt that every cell in his body relaxed.
There were white undulations in the distance, indicating that we were heading in the right direction, heading towards the interior of Greenland.
Because there can't be ups and downs on an ice field, there must be mountains.
“If you choose a goal as the direction to move towards, once you reach that goal, you must set a new goal.”
"In polar environments, it's very empty, with almost no characteristic objects. Remember that you can see a feature on the horizontal plane, but that doesn't mean you can get to that place quickly."
The old saying goes, "A horse will die if it runs too far up the mountain."
You see the mountain, but even if the horse runs to death, it may not be able to reach the mountain.
"It could be 100 kilometers away. The captain on the cruise ship shared with me an experience he had when he was walking on the Greenland ice sheet and saw a black object at eye level. In weeks of traveling, they passed icebergs and coastlines and didn't see anything. That was the first time they saw a small black dot."
"The captain was so excited about the different object he had seen that he set up camp and talked eagerly about the mountain they would reach the next morning. After two days of walking, it was still there!"
[Please don't talk about this embarrassing thing, okay? ]
【Ah, it's the captain! 】
[Captain, are you watching the live broadcast as well? ]
[Aren’t you afraid of hitting an iceberg if you don’t keep an eye on the ship?]
[Dear, I have a first mate and a second mate. They are the ones who really do the work.]
[Good Guy]
[Courtesy First Mate]
Bifang drank the last sip of water, squatted down and started to chisel ice.
"I drank a total of four bottles of water these days, about two bottles a day, not too much. Drinking water is part of metabolism and will take away your body's energy, so unless it's extreme, just keep the necessary water."
"One thing I feel very clearly is that the saltiness of the water is becoming less and less obvious. Now that we are here..."
Bifang chiseled off a piece of ice, held it in his mouth, and then spit it out, saying with a smile: "It's almost not salty anymore, which means the ice here is very old."
The audience was a little surprised. What was the reason?
[I always thought ice was fresh water, how come there is salty ice? ]
[Indeed, I only remember learning before that the icebergs in the North and South Poles are all fresh water, and there are a lot of them]
The Antarctic and Arctic glaciers are the world's largest freshwater resources, storing 70% of the world's fresh water.
This is probably everyone’s impression, is fresh water salty?
"You don't understand the real reason why glaciers are fresh water. The icebergs in the North and South Poles are indeed fresh water, but the reasons for their formation are different, which also leads to some other differences."
"The Antarctic region is a continent. The specific heat capacity of land is much smaller than that of water, and its ability to store heat is weaker. The heat gained in summer is quickly radiated away."
Bifang poured crushed ice into the pot and explained.
"The annual average temperature there is around -56 degrees Celsius. Under low temperatures, the water produced by the water cycle mainly exists in the form of rain or snow, and the freezing point of water is 0 degrees Celsius. Under low temperatures, the snow can remain unchanged all year round."
"Even in the summer, some of the snow melts and quickly freezes into ice, so there are large amounts of ice floating on the ocean around the Antarctic continent, forming huge icebergs."
This audience is easy to understand.
The fresh water in Antarctica turns into snow due to natural evaporation, and then melts into ice. During the entire process, it does not come into contact with any salt and naturally becomes a freshwater iceberg.
"In contrast, the Arctic region has a small land area, and most of it is the Arctic Ocean. Because the heat capacity of seawater is large, it can absorb more heat, and the heat is dissipated relatively slowly, so the annual average temperature there is higher than that of the Antarctic. Coupled with the warm current, it is around 8°C."
"The freezing point of seawater is lowered because of various salts. At the same time, the solubility of seawater will also decrease at low temperatures. The salt content of seawater at high temperatures is higher. When seawater freezes again, the salt will transfer to the seawater with a relatively high temperature. Therefore, the seawater after freezing becomes 'fresh water'. The salt will precipitate in the form of crystals, causing the salt content in the formed glacier to decrease."
"As a result, there is less ice in the Arctic than in the Antarctic, and most of it is stored in Greenland."
"The former is a direct qualitative change due to natural distillation into fresh water, but the latter is a qualitative change caused by the precipitation of salt due to various reasons. Since it is a quantitative change, there will naturally be a process. We have walked from the seaside to here and experienced this quantitative change process."
"The Eskimos living in the Arctic ice sheet rely on this method to obtain a certain amount of fresh water resources, which also causes the salt content of the ocean in the frozen sea or near the sea ice to be higher.
"When it reached my feet, it had completely undergone a qualitative change. The salt had completely precipitated out and it had become real fresh water. What I drank before could be considered salt water with a little salt added. Although it is salt water, its salinity is much lower than seawater and can be used to replenish water."
【Strange knowledge has increased.】
[I feel like I have learned something amazing]
【Geography is amazing】
"In fact, when the seawater freezes, a very interesting phenomenon occurs, that is, the death icicle."
"The temperature at the North and South Poles is very low. Sometimes the sea surface temperature drops to dozens of degrees below zero, at which time the sea surface begins to freeze. As the sea surface temperature drops, the salt is precipitated and the density of the sea water below increases, causing an ice column to extend downward. The surrounding sea water will not freeze after reaching the freezing point due to the change in density."
"Thus, the 'death icicle' was born. When observed from below, you can see an icicle extending from the sea surface to the bottom. Under extremely low temperatures, freezing occurs in a very short time. Marine life touched by the icicle will be frozen instantly, so this phenomenon is called the 'death icicle'."
[What kind of magic? ]
[Fang Shen, I want to learn this! ]
[Fang Shen: If I knew this, I would have gone to travel in space long ago]
"We are now walking on the Greenland ice sheet, which is thousands of meters thick and cannot be penetrated by human power. The known average thickness is more than 2,000 meters, and the thickest part is even more than 3,400 meters."
One astonishing statistic after another popped out of Bifang's mouth, shocking the audience.
Who has ever seen an ice layer several thousand meters thick?
In such a shocking situation, Bifang still failed to reach the mountains in front of him. He had no choice but to dig a snow ditch to survive for the night.
It was not until the evening of the third day that Bifang actually touched the first rock he had seen on the island.
And up to this point, he hadn't eaten for three days.
